The sound of the bomb was ticking away in my head...I had to diffuse it at any cost or else everything would be doomed. Only a few seconds remained...I could feel the sweat clinging to my brow, my heart racing. And all of a sudden……”Counter Terrorist wins”! Oh no no it ain’t just another day dream of a 20 year old but the computer game Counter Strike.
Ah! That was easy wasn’t it? Come to think of it I guess all of you've seen it more than once: computer generated images moving across your screen with eerie fluidity, peopling your video games, with motion so detailed that it's almost unreal. It seems like magic, a sort of digital wizardry too far beyond anything man-made. These days playing a computer game can feel like stepping into another world, where the impossible is possible and the unreal looks only too real. With the advent of computer animation, game special effects are becoming more and more believable, and more and more spectacular.
In the 3D animations that we see in the games today an animator creates a simplified representation of a character's anatomy, analogous to a skeleton. The position of each segment of the skeletal model is defined by animation variables, or Avars. By changing the values of the Avars over time, the animator creates motion by moving the character frame by frame.
For the die hard fans of FIFA, ever wondered how Christiano Ronaldo looks so realistic in the game? For such tasks, a newer method called motion capture is used which makes use of live action in which a real performer acts out the scene as if they were the character to be animated. His or her motion is recorded to a computer using video cameras and markers, and that performance is then applied to the animated character.
Computer animation can be done with the help of animation software such as Amorphium, Maya, Blender, 3D Studio Max etc. Some impressive animation can be achieved even with basic programs. However, the rendering can take a lot of time on an ordinary home computer. This level of quality for game animation would take tens of hundreds of years to create on a home computer. Many powerful workstation computers are used instead. Graphics workstation computers use two to four processors, and thus are a lot more powerful than a home computer, and are specialized for rendering. A large number of workstations known as a render farm are networked together to effectively act as a giant computer which eventually help us stay glued to the monitor for hours at a stretch playing our favourite games.
The technology for motion-capture is constantly undergoing refinement and improvement, and the process grows in leaps and bounds. However, it is still a long way away from being able to capture the motions of quadrupeds or other members of the animal and insect kingdoms. I don't know about your pets, but I know that my dog wouldn't be any happy about being wrapped in a bulky sensor suit, forget about getting him to follow the script, or even stay in one place.
To be able to produce such dazzling effects by combining the world of the real with the world of the make-believe is a difficult and complex task, but somehow, knowing the technicality behind the final product doesn’t remove the magic or enjoyment from these 3D-animated wonders. So the next time you're seated in your gaming hot seat watching the character of the latest computer game play its way across the screen, don't be afraid to speak up when the awed whisper of "Amazing graphics man….How'd they do that?" reaches your ears.
On second thoughts...you might want to wait until you’ve completed the stage to spill the beans on them.Peace!!!!!